Am I back? Time will tell - also: Spider-Man game review

So, it’s been about 6 months since I last did anything with this site. I’ve been thinking on and off about what, if anything, I’d like to do with it. My initial notion was to put in a bunch of reviews flashing numbers in categories and adding some flashy video and image pieces to it. However, currently – I have almost no visitors. Somehow, the hours of recording, editing and uploading with a really, really bad computer did not seem worth it. So, I’ve decided to try a bit of something else for now. My wife (who has a very popular blog that mine could only hope to imitate if my views multiplied by… well, about ten thousand) will give me some pointers to hopefully increase potential traffic. And by increase I’m hoping for more than just… her.

So for now, what am I going to post? Well, still game news and rumors (I did like 2 whole of these but I think they’re interesting for gamers), brief reviews (think descriptions of the game and impressions. Maybe I’ll come up with some magical number at the end of the review to represent how I liked it. Maybe I’ll address magic 8-ball. We’ll see how that pans out).

Anyway – let me know what (if anything) you think – I’m certainly open to longer, more detailed reviews complete with media – but there’s got to be some demand for it, otherwise it’s just not really worth the effort. So, why I don’t start this off with a small review of a Playstation 3 game one of my co-workers loaned me, call Spider-Man: Web of Shadows

I noticed a trend when I looked this game up at one time – it got critically panned by most sites like IGN and Gamespot, but player review scores came out much higher on average. So which category do I fall into? More the player one – but really closer to the middle I guess.

Good points: animations are good, I like the customizations, there’s some replay value here (4 different endings based on your decisions), some cool characters and the open world play is fun (and very much reminds me of the Spider-Man game I played on Playstation 2 years ago and enjoyed.

Bad points: Graphics don’t always look clean during fast movements, and you’ll be moving around quite fast while web-swinging around the city. Side missions are pretty repetitive. Spidey’s voice actor kind of annoyed me for some reason.

Overall, most review critics were scoring this game between 5 and 6. Most sites I saw with reader reviews were coming out around an 8. I’d probably setting around… *shakes the Magic 8-ball: Absolutely!

Apparently this is not going to work for review scores. So for now, I’ll throw out a 7. It was fun, which is the key – and there’s replay value. But it could have been better with just a bit more attention to the finer points like voice and graphics. Anyway – I’m hoping to build some steam and throw out more random gaming notions on a fairly regular basis and see if it sticks. Hope you’ll join me!